Balaam’s Donkey Confronts BP Oil (Numbers 22)
by Lowell Bliss, Director of Eden Vigil Institute for Environmental Leadership
Exclusive: BP to ditch renewables goals and return focus to fossil fuels.
Feb 24 (Reuters) - BP's chief executive will scrap a target to increase renewable generation 20-fold by 2030, returning the focus to fossil fuels, as part of a strategy shift announced on Wednesday to tackle investor concerns over earnings, two sources told Reuters. BP's shares have underperformed rivals in recent years and the oil major has already dropped its target to cut oil and gas output by 2030, Reuters reported in October. (Source)
Balaam—son of Beor, paid money by the Balak, King of Moab, to curse the Hebrew tribes coming out of Egypt, thwarted by a talking donkey—is another character in the Old Testament who never seems to emerge out of our Sunday School children’s books into the light of our current crises. His story with the talking donkey is confined to three chapters in the Book of Numbers (22-24). His death is recorded in Numbers 31 where he is singled out among those killed after a raid on Midian. But Balaam is not forgotten. Decades and centuries later, Joshua, Nehemiah, and Micah will invoke and condemn his memory. (Joshua 13:22, 24:9-10; Nehemiah 13:2; Micah 6:5). And then, curiously, deep into the New Testament, Balaam is also mentioned. More specifically, it is the “way” of Balaam that is condemned in 2 Pet 2:15, the “error” of Balaam condemned in Jude 1:11, and the “teaching” of Balaam condemned in Rev. 2:14. What might be his way, his error, and his teaching that we should avoid—and condemn—today? Years from now, will our grandchildren be telling stories about British Petroleum and then immediately spitting on the ground?
Scripture’s own commentary on Balaam identifies four sins.
Joshua 13:2 points out that Balaam practiced divination, which would seem to be an automatic disqualifier, but the Numbers account is confusing since often Balaam seems to be, even from his first appearance, a servant of Yahweh. In the same way, we should say that there is nothing inherently evil in being a fossil fuel company like BP.
The remainder of the references in Joshua, Nehemiah, and Micah point out that while Balaam had the power to bless or to curse the vulnerable Israelite’s, he intended to curse. He chose to curse until a talking donkey, an avenging angel, and the voice of God intervened. In the end, Balaam pronounced blessings on Israel, but it was apparently against his will. Israel didn’t forget. They took it personally.
Thirdly, Balaam chose to curse seemingly for one reason alone: he could make a lot of money for doing so. At first, Balaam, warned by God, refuses the offer of Balak. The king sends his officials back to Balaam with a message, “Do not let anything keep you from coming to me, because I will reward you handsomely and do whatever you say. Come and put a curse on these people for me.” Balaam protests: “Even if Balak gave me all the silver and gold in his palace, I could not do anything great or small to go beyond the command of the Lord my God.” And yet, the next morning, he saddles his donkey and goes to Balak. Jude 1:11 compares this to modern false teachers who “have rushed for profit into Balaam’s error.” 2 Peter 2:14-15 says of the modern ungodly, “they are experts in greed—an accursed brood! They have left the straight way and wandered off to follow the way of Balaam son of Bezer, who loved the wages of wickedness.”
In the end, when Balaam is unable to satisfy his contract with Balak, Balak revokes the reward. “Now I am going back to my people,” Balaam tells him, “but come, let me warn you of what this people will do to your people in days to come” (Numbers 24:12-14). What follows then are three prophecies of how hard it is going to on the Canaanite kingdoms to have the Israelite tribes living among them. Balaam and Balak go their separate ways, which would seem to be the end of Balaam’s story except for what happens in the next chapter. “While Israel was staying in Shittim, the men began to indulge in sexual immorality with Moabite women, who invited them to the sacrifices to their gods,” (Numbers 25:1-2). Most immediately, God blames the Israelite men and not the Moabite women, sending a plague that kills 24,000. Balaam doesn’t even appear in the story. Nonetheless, the author of the Book of Revelation draws an analogy for one of the seven churches, warning that “there are some among you who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin so that they ate food sacrificed to idolsand committed sexual immorality” (Rev. 2:14). If we can believe an enraged Moses, Numbers 31 can shed some more light on exactly how Balaam (and the Moabite women) were implicated. “Have you allowed all the women to live?” Moses asked his commanders. “They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to the Lord in the Peor incident, so that a plague struck the Lord’s people” (Numbers 31:15-16). It seems like Balak and Balaam were persistent. If you want to make lots of money, and if you intend to follow through on your cursing, there are multiple ways (more subtle, more gaslight-able) to sidestep a God who tried to make things so clear that he sent a talking donkey, a murderous angel, and his own voice.
In an age where fossil fuel production is so obviously a curse to God’s creation, not a blessing, even my children’s generation is a witness to BP walking in the way, the error, and teaching of Balaam. In 2000, British Petroleum launched a $200 million rebranding campaign. Henceforth, BP would stand for “Beyond Petroleum.” Their new logo would be a green and yellow sunburst. In a paper in 2020 that surely needs to be updated now, Daniel Valle writes:
On August 4th, 2020, BP announced that it was transitioning its business away from fossil fuels toward renewable and low carbon energy (Hirs, 2020). Specific goals included the reduction of its carbon footprint by 40% within 10 years, and to become carbon neutral by 2050. The company also announced that it would not enter new countries for oil and gas development.
But then Valle immediately notes, “The transition was driven primarily by a crash in oil prices that began in 2018, combined with forecasts of continued low prices into the foreseeable future” (Horowitz, 2020). It’s easy to bless instead of curse when you can no longer make money at cursing, or if the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of MEXICO (emphasis mine) acts like an avenging angel on your public relations campaign.
In the end we don’t need last week’s announcement to feel like BP has always been an accursed practitioner whose intention is to curse Planet Earth, its ecosystems, its local resource communities, and its climate-vulnerable communities. We owe an apology to Canadian activist and journalist Naomi Klein, who like the writers in the Prophets and the New Testament about Balaam, put a new gloss on the fossil fuel companies. In 2012, she is quoted in Bill McKibben’s famous “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math” article: “Lots of companies do rotten things in the course of their business – pay terrible wages, make people work in sweatshops – and we pressure them to change those practices, but these numbers make clear that with the fossil-fuel industry, wrecking the planet is their business model. It’s what they do.” At the time, some of us thought she was being too harsh. We’ve all been forcibly graduated from our Sunday School children’s book since then.
You are very dear to God,
Lowell Bliss,
On behalf of Climate Intercessors Leadership Team